


Sunshine's Eschatology

by Anonymous



Category: Sunshine - Robin McKinley
Genre: Canon Continuation, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Family History, Magical Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29054748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A magical coffeehouse baker and a not-all-that-evil vampire, bonded for survival…noSunshine must choose between her love for her biker cook boyfriend and the vampire who fought at her side against…noAn epic tale of found family and family by blood…noLook, Sunshine and Con try to work out what happens next, and Mel gets involved. Yolande helps out, and then Pat and Aimil show up near the end.
Relationships: Constantine/Rae "Sunshine" Seddon, Mel/Rae "Sunshine" Seddon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	1. Roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [basketofnovas (slashmarks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/gifts).



> First of all, if you haven’t read _Sunshine_ by Robin McKinley, you are missing out on a treat and should remedy that as soon as possible. 
> 
> **Quick(ish) summary of the book that does it no real justice:**  
>  Rae, who goes by the name Sunshine, is the estranged daughter of a once-powerful magic-using family whose own powers, once latent and forgotten, emerged when she was kidnapped by vampires. Intended as a meal for their vampire captive, Con, she helps him escape instead, using the powers that her grandmother showed her as a child long ago. 
> 
> While trying to maintain her life as a coffeehouse baker and her relationship with Mel, an ex-biker war veteran who works as the head cook at the coffeehouse, she and Con explore their newfound bond, her growing magical abilities, and an undeniable though seemingly unwelcome sexual attraction. 
> 
> All of this is complicated by SOF, the Special Other Forces, a police force tasked with hunting down and removing Other threats to humanity. Sunshine maintains a friendship of sorts with several SOF agents, including Pat, who revealed to her that he is a partblood, someone with a demon or two hidden in their family tree. Aimil, Sunshine’s best friend, has also been persuaded to work semi-secretly for SOF, with the best of intentions– preventing all of humanity from being under the sway of the vampires within a hundred years.
> 
> After a couple of vampire-related incidents, Sunshine came to the notice of the local head of SOF, the one they call the goddess of pain, a frightening and unethical woman who wields influence over the minds of her minions.
> 
> After Sunshine and Con have destroyed the master vampire and his nest and temporarily escaped the clutches of the goddess of pain, Sunshine determines that she cannot just turn her back on everything that has happened, no matter how much she wants to. She and Con are inextricably bound to each other. The book ends with the two going out on the vampire equivalent of a stroll-in-the-park first date. 
> 
> _And then Robin McKinley never published anything else in this ‘verse._  
>  (insert sounds of readers frantically flipping pages and begging for more)

And now what? What happens now? What is the fate of the Cinnamon Roll Queen who kills master vampires, the unassuming baker of Bitter Chocolate Death and Killer Zebras and the Death of Marat and... hell, there might be a theme here. Maybe I should watch that if I ever get around to naming the cherry tarts. The damn things were getting even more popular as we neared the end of cherry season, but if I named them, I’d be stuck making them forever.

And forever, or at least a really long lifespan, was starting to seem like a real possibility. _If_ I was a big thor magic user after all and not just some red-eyed bad cross partblood who hadn’t yet gone on a murder rampage. I’d certainly had plenty of opportunities to trigger a bloody spree. It was a good sign that I hadn’t. A very good sign. Practically a certainty.

And then there was Con. I had more or less come to terms with all the little affinities for the dark that kept popping up after my bond with him - seeing in the dark like a vampire, traveling through Other-space like a vampire... But the continued presence of the vampire himself? That was a problem that I just didn’t seem willing to let go of, although I had offered.

And the vampire involved should be glad to be free of an unwilling alliance with a human, even one that had resulted in the destruction of a rival that had tried to kill him, right? Instead, we’d gone ambling around Other-space before he escorted me home in time for my 4am shift at the coffeehouse. It’s not like we had a heart-to-heart or anything. We didn’t even talk as we strolled around. And holding my hand the whole time was probably more to keep me from wandering off into vampiric potholes, because it certainly couldn’t have been anything else, right? There absolutely wasn’t any uncomfortable attraction between us, any reason to read into how he warmed his body to match mine, matched his stride to mine, the very gentle way his fingers moved against mine...

Right.

It had been interesting to drift through nowheresville without being in a deadly hurry, though, without a pulsating beacon of evil hovering like a thunderstorm at the edge of my vision. And still I’d kept turning my head like I was trying to triangulate some distant sound you’re not sure if you’re hearing.

“All of Bo’s followers will have been used up in his defense or ceased to exist in our final confrontation.”

I’d sighed. Had Con ever observed social niceties when he was human? Like light conversation, or gently leading up to a subject? “Thanks?”

“Does it ease your mind to know that?”

Since it actually _did_ , I’d shut my mouth and kept strolling.

When we’d arrived back at Yolande’s house, my balcony taking shape between one step and the next, I’d been disappointed to find his hand slipping from mine.

“You will call if you have need of me,” he’d said. Not an order, just a statement. I’d nodded and let him go, watched him step backwards into nowheresville. To go feed. Because he was a vampire. Just not...the really really bad kind? Oh Sunshine, dangerous slope there.

I shoved my twitching conscience down for later avoidance and went to make cinnamon rolls at Charlie’s Coffeehouse. Which was my job. And my passion, actually, and the closest thing I had to a reason for being. I mean, there was nothing else to do, right? We’d destroyed the evil master vampire and his gang of suckers and lived to tell the tale. I just needed to tidy up the loose ends with a bunch of lies to my friends and family and the Special Other Force who wanted all vampires dead and get on with things. While consorting with one of the Darkest Others that were attempting to roll the entire human race into darkness and slavery. Just like a story. Nice and neat by the last page. Sure.

* * *

There was a table full of SOF agents in the coffeehouse when I poked my face out of the bakery after the morning rush. Jesse smiled but Pat only waved a greeting and kept shoveling muffins into his mouth. They kept the table all morning, swapping out people now and again, although Pat and Theo stayed the whole time. I guess they were keeping as low a profile as they could manage.

As long as no one tried to drag me off to talk to the goddess of pain anytime soon, I figured I was ahead of the game. Temporarily. I was under no illusions that I’d been forgotten. That gorgon was not just going to forget me, especially after my mysterious friend and I had managed to emerge, relatively unscathed, from the ruins of a sucker nest. But by the end of my shift, they hadn’t come back to talk with me or tried to drag me off in a specially-outfitted vehicle. So I settled behind Mel on his motorcycle and went back with him to his place. Where we did some good old-fashioned human bonding, naked and sweaty skin and racing heartbeats and dull human teeth making soft marks just for pleasure’s sake. I tried not to think about the future or compare Mel’s hot weight above me to the way Con had felt, there in his dark lair, when I’d thought we were about to... stop it, Sunshine.

I hoped Mel hadn’t noticed any distraction on my part, but he didn’t mention it if he did. And it wasn’t like I wanted Mel any less. Mel made me happier than anyone else ever had, he was steady and strong and good-hearted, and made my heart beat faster every time he stroked a finger across my skin just so...

I settled into the curve of his shoulder with his arm around me and breathed. And for the moment, I let all thoughts of the dark go.

* * *

For a couple of weeks, there was a pause of sorts. SOF folk were in the coffeehouse every day that I was, but they made no moves. I got no royal summons, and no one approached me, but I knew I was watched. All the time. Every morning there were fresh tire tracks from parked cars outside the wards around Yolande’s place.

And every few nights, Con would take me into Other-space for a couple of hours and though it felt something like a companionable ramble, I could sense we moved in ever-widening spirals. I was slowly learning how to navigate, how Other-space mapped to the real world, though I doubted it was more than the clumsiest of associations. My vampire-gifts were still awkward to use, but apparently I was going to get training.

Bo’s taint was gone, the aether clear of his misshapen and malevolent guardians, but there were faint traces of other influences that Con seemed to be tracking. Some of them felt vampirish, but others were entirely unfamiliar.

“Are we putting SOF out of work then?” I asked one night as we arrived back in my living room and Con’s hand was slipping from mine. “Playing guard dog so no one else moves in?”

He stilled, watching me in a way that made me instantly wary. “In removing Bo, we have created a suspicious void that makes us a focus of much attention, some of it from Others who would like to take advantage. But it still seemed the wisest course.”

“Wise?” I was suddenly more than suspicious. “Stupid question, but we’re not doing this for the health and safety of the human population around here, are we?”

“As much as I desire to keep you safe, no. We are baiting a trap.”

My breath caught. I should have known, but I supposed I hadn’t wanted to think about it. “For anything, or anyone, in particular?”

“Not in particular, Sunshine. The strongest of my kind are unlikely to leave the kingdoms they have already built. But the younger, those who have followers but no established territory, or territory that infringes on another, more powerful, vampire? Those will certainly come.”

I felt sick at the thought of more fights and Con reached out to take both my hands, rubbing his thumbs over my palms. “It will not be like Bo. And they will provide the practice you will need.”

“Practice?” My voice cracked a little.

He met my eyes, a green fire flickering behind his gaze. “We are the best weapon available against my kind. It is what we seem made for, Sunshine.” As my mouth hung open, he slipped away into the night.

 _Made for._ Those words were echoing in my head the next day in the bakery. They reminded me of what Con had said about his master - that Con had been ‘apt to his purpose’. Did Con know something he hadn’t mentioned? Okay, that was a beyond stupid question, Sunshine, an idiocy of carthaginian proportions. Of course Con knew something he hadn’t mentioned.

From behind the closed office door, I could hear my stepbrother Kenny being grounded yet again. The night Con and I had taken out Bo, he’d come home, past curfew, with a cut on his cheek. He’d claimed it was a fight, in that blustery teenage boy way, but he’d been watching me warily ever since and avoiding me as much as possible, not to mention staying out late almost every night since. I’d begun to consider that he’d seen me that night in Old Town, but what could I do about it if he had?

He stormed out of mom’s office, slamming the door behind him, and into the kitchen, where I could hear a faint comforting murmur from Mel. My blood ran cold at Kenny’s response, far louder than necessary.

“Yeah, biker boy, maybe you should pay more attention to Rae since she’s started looking elsewhere for company.”

I burst into the kitchen and grabbed Kenny by the arm, dragging him into the bakery. “What the carthaginian hell is _wrong_ with you?” I hissed at him.

“Oh, what?” he sneered. “Tired of getting all the attention?” He yanked a piece of crumpled paper out of his jacket and flung it at me. “Mom’s been a bitch ever since this all started and it’s all your fault!“

He stormed out of the bakery as I picked up the paper. It was a letter, a bit yellowed with age at the edges but the ink was still sharp and bright. As it settled in my hands I got a shock of recognition. This was from my father, and not just _from_ my father, but hand-written by him. I felt a jolt run up my hands and arms and settle into my chest with a tingle. As I stared, one phrase jumped out at me.

> _...because you had no discernible partblood, Sadie..._

My heart skipped a beat and I focused fiercely. My mother had reached out to my father. And he’d written back.

She’d taken me and left him and his magic-using family and refused all contact. As far as I’d been told, she’d never communicated with him again. But the date at the top was before she’d met Charlie, when we’d still lived in the tiny dark apartment with few windows and I’d started to get so sick. She must have been frantic with worry to have contacted him after all.

I blinked and refocused on the letter.

> _...or that the Blaises engage, like all the magic families, in a kind of selective breeding is absolutely no surprise to you, I know. That we have been striving for particular traits and powers in our offspring for centuries should not be any more surprising. That we did indeed hope for something specific with Raven, but apparently failed to accomplish it, caused a disappointment with my family, certainly, but..._

Ah. Yeah. I didn’t have strong memories of my father but this letter was bringing them back in unpleasant ways. Where had Kenny dug this up? Why had he gone snooping through Mom’s things? And why had she kept this old letter? I felt the tingle in my fingertips again and almost dropped the paper. There was magic in it. It called to me like the necklace Con had given me as a key to his lair. 

But that I _wasn’t_ partblood? That I didn’t have to keep wondering if I had the sort of demon blood that meant I’d be turning homicidal and cannibalistic any day now? The release of that was so overwhelming that I couldn’t feel it yet past the outrage that I’d been bred for something.

I was still scowling at the letter when I heard the warning sounds of my mother emerging from her office. I folded it back up and shoved it in a pocket, fast. I didn’t even want to imagine the fallout of mom catching me with it. It sat in my pocket like a lead weight the rest of my shift.

I stopped in the kitchen before I left to give Mel a hug. He kissed the top of my head and gave me a searching look before he turned back to work, and I made a mental note that we actually had to have a conversation at some point soon.

* * *

Yolande met me on the front porch. My landlady looked faintly worried and I had a moment of anxiety. Had the SOF stopped by? A pack of ghouls? A roof leak?

“You have a link on you,” she said, holding up a hand to stop me before I could come up the steps. “A powerful one. I felt it come through the outer wards.”

A splash of panic flashed through me before I connected it to what I had in my pocket. “An old letter from my father to my mother.”

Her eyes lit with interest. I’d told her a fair amount of my history throughout the Bo thing so I didn’t have to explain their relationship, at least. Or lack thereof. She gestured me inside, to her workshop.

I laid the letter on her table and she raised an eyebrow at me. “Go ahead,” I muttered. “It’s all old news.”

She glanced through it without touching it, nodding to herself. “Your mother may not have realised she kept this. It has a very powerful misdirection on it. But she did have enough awareness of it that it must have been locked away with several powerful charms. You see how the paper itself has aged, but the ink is crisp and sharp?”

I stared at the writing, seeing the grasp of the Blaises reaching out after all these years.

Yolande picked up a dark candle that smelled of pine and rosemary and lit it carefully, holding it above the letter on the table. After the flame steadied, she gently blew it out and I watched the smoke rise from the glowing wick. It wavered, dipping down toward the letter, but dissipated before reaching the surface.

“Unanchored,” she pronounced crisply. “No one active at the other end.” She glanced at me. “That has nothing to do with the well-being, or not, of the person who set the spell. It simply means the other end of the spell has lapsed. But what was set into the ink remains viable.”

“...to do what with?”

“It is set for finding. But without an active end, I do not know what you will find.”

“Could it be reactivated from that end?”

“Not without having the letter itself.”

I picked up the letter and slowly folded it. I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do with it, but I couldn’t let it be.

* * *

I knew SOF was keeping an eye on me beyond showing up at the coffeehouse and bogarting a table all morning. The tire tracks along the road that meant parked cars at night – they were probably watching for Con to show up. I knew they had to have gone to explore the lake where he’d given a bogus address. I’d expected to be pulled back into the goddess of pain’s office right away, but apparently she was content to wait for developments. That was almost scarier. How long would she wait, I wondered.

And my vampire never came to the front door anyway. I’d given him permission to enter the day he’d carried me home from our escape, bloody and exhausted. Now he just stepped from nowheresville into my living room without leaving a visible clue for anyone outside.

But I hated the pervasive sense of being watched and I often didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until I was safely behind Yolande’s wards at the end of the day. Or, oddly enough, at Mel’s.

I put the letter on the coffee table and set about making dinner. When Con showed up that night, his head turned toward it almost immediately and he froze, settling into that stillness that indicated startlement in a vampire. Or at least, in _my_ vampire.

I sipped my tea. “From my father to my mother, years ago.”

“May I?”

I nodded, watching him approach the letter with all the wariness of a hunting cat stalking a snake.

“A powerful magic,” he finally pronounced, putting it down again. “But unanchored.”

“Yolande said the same thing.”

He gave an infinitesimal nod. “Bring it. We will see where it leads us.”

I nearly spat out my tea. “What?”

“I suspect it will take us to the place it was written.” He paused. “But I am forgetting your discomfort with matters of your family.”

I opened my mouth to tell him he was damn right I didn’t want anything to do with them and paused. That I wasn’t, apparently, partblood, was such an amazing relief that I hadn’t entirely processed it yet. I kept having to remind that still-intermittently-panicking part of my mind to let that go. But that I was part of some breeding experiment...that made me angry all over again.

“Right.” I swigged back the last of my tea and stood to slip on my shoes.

* * *

When we stepped into Other-space, the letter in my hand gave a little twitch and then tugged, like a child dragging an adult somewhere. Con let me lead, his fingers entwined in mine and simply followed me. It wasn’t a long walk before the live thing in my hand went still and behaved like ink and paper again. I was learning that that meant either somewhere close, location-wise, or somewhere familiar to me.

I took a step toward the space I could feel waiting, beyond the boundary of Other-space, and Con let my hand drop. I looked at him in surprise.

“I do not have an invitation to enter,” he said simply.

“Can I invite you if I go in?”

He tilted his head. “If you wish,” he said finally, as if surprised.

“Is there someone there? Inside?”

“No. Not at the moment.”

And yet I felt attention on me as soon as I stepped out of Other-space and looked around at the shelves and tables and storage chests. A library of sorts? A workroom? The air grew thick and hard to breathe and I felt a thousand eyes staring with sharp intention and then everything just...stopped. The air was just air, no one was watching me.

The books on the nearest shelf had the Blaise family crest. Perhaps I had been recognized, in some nebulous way, as family. Allowed.

Now how did you invite a vampire in who was waiting in Other-space? After a moment’s thought, I shrugged and turned in the direction I could still feel him, held out my hand, and said his name. The watching presences snapped awake again as soon as he appeared, but subsided with almost audible grumblings when he took my hand. They didn’t like it, but apparently they, whatever they were, weren’t going to argue with a Blaise. After a moment, I let his hand drop, and though there remained a lingering sense of wariness, there was no further protest.

Con was already studying the area around us and I turned back to my explorations as well. It definitely had overtones of a library, and also a mad scientist’s lair. There were mysterious pieces of what could have been medical equipment. There were bottles, jars, and flasks, all in jewel tones or clear carved crystal. Huge leather-bound chests with metal clasps squatted here and there.

Everything was spotless, not a speck of dust anywhere. “Either someone comes in here to dust or there’s a thor cleaning spell that someone could’ve made a fortune off of.”

“Someone comes in regularly. Male.” Con glanced around, emitting faint frown overtones though nothing showed in his face. “This is a stronghold, but long disused. A work shop, a library, and a treasury.”

I looked around helplessly, the letter clutched in my hand. “I have no idea what to do now.”

Con slowly turned his head, scanning. “There,” he said. “There is something that emanates your power.”

He was pointing at a set of shelves near the back of the room. On the top shelf, above my head, there was a stack of thick books lying flat. The cover of the top book was slightly lifted by something inside. I pulled the book down and flipped it open.

A ring, green stones surrounded by baroque curls of gold, lay there. I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes.

“You made this,” Con said softly behind me. “It bears the signature of your power.”

“My grandmother’s ring.” My throat felt thick and tight.

He let his hand hover over it. “Your first major working.” He tapped the page beside it. “Left here as a clue for you.”

I focused on the slightly faded writing there. An older tome, with slightly archaic language, discussing the Blaise family’s breeding program. I felt a shudder run through me.

Con took the book from my hands and guided me to a chair. I clutched my grandmother’s ring in one hand and set my father’s letter on the page like a bookmark while Con took a seat nearby and watched me read.

I stared down at the book...no, better to call it what it was – a stock registry for humans. Was it better that I was no partblood on my mother’s side if it meant that I was the discarded product of some eugenics program instead?

A creaking noise overhead had me freezing and staring at the ceiling. I realized then that there were no windows or doors, only a slim spiral staircase in the center of the room. We were in a basement or some other underground construction.

Con was still watching me but I could tell he was tracking the noises overhead. When his head turned toward the stairwell, I tensed. He stood and drifted further into a dark corner, waiting.

A pair of boots appeared at the top of the stairs, then jeans, then a familiar-looking shirt and tattooed arms. “Don’t!” I cried even as Con was streaking forward, and then Mel was standing there, blank and wide-eyed and unfocused. Under the dark. My boyfriend, here in a Blaise archive, held in my vampire‘s control. Yeah, that sounded about as good as the actual situation.

“This human is bound,” Con said thoughtfully.

I bit my lip. “You don’t mean by you, just now.”

“He is under a permanent binding imposed by another source, sometime in the past.”

“Oh. Er... Con, this is my boyfriend Mel.”

“The caretaker of your family’s treasury.”

“And the head cook at the coffeehouse.”

Con slowly circled him. “He has many powerful tattoos. Unusual.”

I nodded.

“This one.” He indicated a jagged and abstract lightning bolt at the base of Mel’s skull, under his hair. With shock, I realised for the first time the resemblance to the Blaise family crest. Mel was under a Blaise binding?

Con turned to look at me. “You have affection for him.”

I nodded again, feeling a chill creep over me.

“He returns this affection.”

It was a statement and not a question, but I answered anyway. “I thought so.”

Con considered that. “I do not think you should doubt your judgement. He is bound to some service, but it should have no control over his emotions.”

I stared, stricken, at Mel. “He’s not aware of this conversation, right?”

“No.”

“And he’ll be fine after we leave?”

Con gave me an odd look. “Yes.”

I gathered up the stack of books that had been under my grandmother’s ring and thrust them at Con. He took them, holding the heavy leatherbound tomes with ease. “I want to go home.”


	2. Branches

Con brought me back to my apartment and set the books on the coffee table. Without a word, he went and turned the taps on in the tub before going to the kitchen to ransack my cupboards. I caught the faint scent of vanilla on the steamy clouds rolling out of the open bathroom door and drifted towards the warmth.

“Sunshine.”

I leaned in the doorway and blinked at him, realizing my hands were unfastening my jeans. How had I gotten so comfortable around a vampire? “I’m all right,” I said automatically. And then he was gone, and I was soaking in hot vanilla-scented water and thinking of the last time Mel and I had had sex, the weight of him over me as we moved together, the taste of his skin against my tongue.

Mel, bound in some way to the Blaise family. My Mel, who I’d thought was with me because he wanted to be. He still might be, but...

I fell asleep in the bathtub still worrying at that and woke up shivering. I emptied the tub and refilled it and huddled in it until I was warm again and then dried off and climbed into bed. It was Monday, the coffeehouse was closed, and I needed the sleep.

* * *

Yolande was drinking tea in the garden when I stumbled out that afternoon, still drowsy and out of sorts. She poured me a cup and waited while I sipped. There was a citrus astringency to the tea that worked to clear my mind by the time I’d finished my cup.

“My boyfriend is bound to the Blaises somehow,” I blurted.

She took a contemplative sip of her tea. “Your biker lad with all the tattoos?”

I nodded. “Con says one of his tattoos is the problem.”

“And you fear that he is only involved with you because of the binding?”

My throat tightened. Mel had been my steady anchor, through all of this, my only safe relationship. The only one I had _chosen._ Doubting him was beyond painful.

She lapsed into a thoughtful pause, then said, “You have not brought him here, to your home.”

“I don’t bring anyone here. Well....”

Your Other friend is a bit of a special case,” she allowed with a faint smile, which faded. “A binding done through body modification like a tattoo is a powerful one, and beyond tricky to remove. And here is something else to consider, my dear – a tattoo is not a quick process, and the choice of it implies that your boyfriend accepted it willingly.”

“You think he decided to get involved with me, long before he knew me?”

“I am implying that the binding may have nothing to do with you at all. There is every possibility that he sought out a Blaise magic user to assist with some other problem and it is sheer coincidence that he is involved with you.”

I squinted at that, considering it. “I’m not sure I buy the coincidence angle,” I finally said.

“Nor I. But the possibility exists. And you are determined to pursue this, I can tell. So be aware that it may not be a revelation that you, or he, will welcome unraveling.”

But I couldn’t let it go. And the fact that the Blaise library/workshop/whatever was in the basement of Mel’s place meant that Mel _was_ involved with my family beyond a one-time transaction. I hadn’t told Yolande about that, of course.

“Breeding programs,” I said abruptly. Yolande blinked at me. “Do most magic families...”

“Yes. To some extent or another. With long-term and short-term goals.” She paused. “Whether they admit it or not is a different matter, of course. But strong magic is power, and few will give up a chance at gaining or holding it.” She took a thoughtful sip, then set her cup down with a distinct click. “Sunshine, if they had known of your power before the wars, your mother would never have been allowed to take you away. If your family were still extant and found about your powers, you risk being forced into an arranged marriage, at the very least.”

I scowled as I remembered some of what I’d read in the family records. Yolande sat with me in companionable silence while I considered breaking it off with Mel. Could I walk away from the best and happiest relationship I’d ever had? Was I willing to risk Mel by fooling around with an unknown binding? I might lose him either way.

My magic roused under the afternoon sunlight. My sunshine-self took the warmth and wrapped it around me in a reassuring embrace, my tree-self gave a contented rustle of leaves, and my deer-self raised her head alertly, as if scenting something familiar. My dark-self whispered of desire.

I stifled a laugh. So I’d been outvoted, had I? Well. That meant that if I wanted to continue with Mel he’d have to be freed of any bond to my family first. I wouldn’t risk being pulled into any breeding program that might still be in action.

I turned to Yolande, who was watching me with an eyebrow raised. “How would I go about safely breaking a binding like that?”

* * *

I stood in my living room as evening fell and called for Con. He was there almost as soon as I’d said his name and he stood very close, reaching up to cradle my face in his fingertips as he searched it.

“You recovered much more quickly than I expected,” he said, a faint tone of curiosity in his voice. “Are we going back?”

“Yes. I can’t risk being betrayed to my family.”

His eyes shifted toward the coffee table and the stack of studbooks that I’d spent the rest of the afternoon reading through. “I have great doubt your family could hold you for long.”

“They could if they kept me drugged out of my mind.”

His gaze shifted back to me. “Do you believe that they would?”

I was still furious after reading some of the accounts. “It’s a technique that has been used in the past. There are recipes that are useful ‘in case of recalcitrance.’”

“But you do not wish him dead, even to retain your freedom?”

I blinked. “I _like_ him, Con! Of course I don’t want him dead!”

Not one for small talk, he held out his hand.

* * *

We arrived outside of Mel’s place and I went up and knocked on the front door. Con waited a little distance off, though I knew he could be beside me within a heartbeat.

“Sunshine?” Mel opened the door with a smile, which faded as he glanced past me toward Con and hurriedly dropped his gaze. When the vampire made no move to come closer, Mel looked back at me. “I guess this is where I find out what’s going on?”

I nodded and Mel sighed. “Come in then,” he said softly, tilting his head towards Con. He sucked in a startled breath when Con came to halt in front of him, moving faster than human senses could follow, but that was all.

“You have had dealings with my kind before.”

“Not...for some time. And then only as a witness.”

Con’s expression of sudden recognition was razor sharp around the edges. “The Blaise agreement with my master. You were the child with the druid.”

“Wait, what?” I fought to keep my jaw off the ground. “Inside. Now.”

* * *

Mel handed me a beer and I took a heavy gulp of it as soon as I sat down. Con stood beside my chair, arms crossed, and lapsed into that waiting stillness he does.

Mel looked at his hands for a long time before he spoke. “When I showed an affinity for nature as a child, I was apprenticed to a powerful druid, one of the founders of what would become the Supergreens after the war.” His fingers wandered over his oak tree tattoo absent-mindedly and I remembered that druids were one of the classes of magic user that were rumored to use tattoos and other body modifications. “He and the Blaise family were looking for a way to breed a very specific type of magic...”

“Against vampires.” Con’s flat statement was startling.

“Of course. Your kind has always been the real danger to the survival of humanity.”

“Why did he help?” I asked Con. “Your master?”

“He did not believe they would fully succeed, and he had also recently suffered the setback from his rival. He was vengeful. And curious.”

Mel had been studying him carefully. “You’re different from other vampires.”

“There are other ways of being what I am. You might call it a difference of philosophy, put into action. But you are not a druid.”

Mel looked down again. “No. I also had a touch for machinery and the very eco-conservative members of the grove decided it was unacceptable. They contracted with the Blaise family to have it pruned. Or locked down if it couldn’t be removed. But after the tattoo was finished, it became clear that they had cut out all my magic, not just the part they disliked.” He shrugged. “They kicked me out and I joined up to fight in the wars. Afterwards, I found the entire grove had been wiped out, as well as the two Blaise magicians that had been involved in the ritual.”

I slumped in my chair. It was generally considered advisable to have bindings removed by the same person who had applied them, lest they go horribly wrong.

“But the tattoo is not just a binding on your power.” Con’s voice was soft.

“No. Do the Blaises ever settle for just one action when they can embed multiple hooks?” Mel’s voice was arid, the bitterness so old that it screamed from the dry streambed it had carved out long ago. “Apparently they thought a watcher in the grove might be useful to them.”

“They did not release that control when you were sent away from the grove.”

“No. I was an errand boy for them off and on during the wars. And then the family just...stopped contacting me. And they seem to have died or been killed or just disappeared. I was last assigned to keep an eye on this Blaise storehouse...” He trailed off and squinted at us. I squirmed. “So there _were_ intruders last night.”

“I think it’s time you knew the whole story,” I said hastily.

He sipped his beer and listened as I told him about the lake, and the vampires who had kidnapped me and imprisoned me with Con. I told him about my grandmother and remembering my magic, and using it to get us out of the trap while protecting a vampire from being destroyed in the direct sunlight for hours while we escaped. I told him about how Con had healed the poisoned wound one of the vampires had given me. I told him about the master vampire Bo, whose trap it was, and who had been searching for us. I told him about the Special Other Forces and the goddess of pain. I told him about how we had destroyed Bo and all his forces. I told him about Yolande, my ward-keeper landlady. And I told him about how Kenny had thrown my father’s letter at me and how it had led us to the storeroom below.

“So the breeding program actually did work,” Mel said slowly. “Your element is sunlight. Only they didn’t know it before they let you go. They thought they failed. And your grandmother never told them.”

I touched my grandmother’s ring in my pocket and nodded.

He raised his gaze toward Con, not meeting his eyes. “And now you plan to destroy other vampires. The two of you.”

“We have little choice,” Con replied. “Once word has spread that an entire nest was destroyed here, others will come to either claim the territory or wreak vengeance on those who have so dared.”

I squirmed in my chair a little. We hadn’t exactly talked about this, but Con was right that we had to do what we could. I didn’t have to like it, but I was slowly coming around to the certainty of it.

“Mel,” I said abruptly. “Tomorrow, after work, will you come meet Yolande?”

He looked startled but nodded. “Yeah. I could take you home from work?”

I relaxed at the thought and Mel smiled, reaching out to take my hand.

Con moved suddenly, a quick glide away and toward the door, and I was on my feet before I thought about it. He paused to nod to me, his face completely without expression, but his eyes flickered past me to Mel for a split second. “You will stay the night here,” he said, certain, and I had to admit the thought of curling up with Mel, skin to skin, was incredibly comforting, despite the uncertainty of his Blaise binding.

Still... “Tomorrow night,” I said firmly. “Come to me tomorrow night. Please.”

He inclined his head and was gone.

* * *

Mel and I had slow, thoughtful sex. I spent an hour tracing over his tattoos before he pinned me down and started a series of gentle sucking kisses along my throat and across my collarbones, moving down to cradle my hips in his strong hands. He used his talented mouth to drive all the distraction out of my brain, at least for the moment, and I moaned and gasped and wallowed in the pleasures of being alive.

Later, when I wrapped my thighs around his hips and rode his slow muscular surges into me, I kept my mouth pressed to his shoulder, breathing in the male scent of him - skin and sweat, a faint tang of leather and something metallic, and pheromones for all I knew. Just a good scent, the scent of Mel. Something familiar and comforting and arousing and mine.

* * *

I had anticipated Kenny’s guilty look the next morning, so when mom stormed into the bakery I just held out the letter to her. To my astonishment, she took it and retreated without a shot fired. I still gave Kenny the cold shoulder. He might be a teenager, and therefore clinically insane, but he knew what he’d done and how unwarranted it had been.

After work, Mel drove me home on his motorcycle, and I took the opportunity to just hold on to him and enjoy the wind and the speed.

Yolande met us on the front porch and gave Mel a sharp down and up look.

“Ma’am,” he said, waiting.

“You certainly can pick them, Sunshine,” she said. “This one reeks of magic.”

Mel boggled at her. “No, I...it was _removed_ years ago...”

“Is that what they told you? A binding can only lock it down. Stifle it. And it certainly seems to have snowballed in the meantime. You’re practically bursting at the seams.” She shook her head and sniffed. “Don’t come in, you’ll just set off my wards. I’ve barely got them balanced for regular visits from a vampire upstairs, much less an unexploded grenade like you. Stay out here and I’ll be right out.”

I smiled to myself and guided a boggling Mel over to sit in the porch swing.

“That’s the one Pat calls a siddhartha type? He must be blind.” He scowled and ran his fingers over the tattoo at the back of his neck. “I can’t feel anything,” he muttered. “Just the same emptiness inside where my magic used to live.”

I reached up, curious, and jumped at the rattle of car keys as Yolande stepped back outside. “Land’s sake, child, don’t do that here! You’ll set off every alert SOF has in the area.”

“Do what?”

“Break the binding. Transmute the ink in the tattoo to something else.”

I blinked. It sounded...not impossible. I heard a sound like branches rustling in the wind as my tree self, my sunshine self, took interest. It was all I could do to keep my hands in my lap.

“To the carriage house,” Yolande ordered crisply. “We’ll take my car.”

Mel spared a few moments to coo over the antique copper-colored Drake my mysterious landlady had hidden away in the carriage house. The sports car purred to life at the first turn of her key and settled into a quiet rumble while we got in.

Yolande patted the dash affectionately. “She’s showy as hell, but there’s nothing around that could catch her.”

Mel stretched his long legs in the front while I settled in the much smaller backseat. “Are we expecting a chase?” I asked.

“You never know,” she answered primly.

* * *

It was a very quick trip toward the lake. Yolande didn’t aim for anywhere I’d been before. The stretch of shore we ended up at, halfway around the lake from the main road, was beautiful and utterly deserted. There were a couple of small bad spots within my perception, but none close enough to bother me.

Yolande took a blanket out of the tiny trunk and spread it down. “Sit down, lad,” she ordered with a faint smile. “Can’t have you falling over if this works.”

_“If_ this works?” Mel groused.

I pushed at his shoulder and he reluctantly settled to his knees on the blanket. I knelt behind him and stared at the tattoo for a moment while Yolande walked around us, setting a number of small objects down and whispering words. When she nodded, I reached out and set my fingertips on his skin.

I hadn’t ever paid any particular attention to this tattoo before, though I had definitely touched it before in passing. But now it seemed to be alive and active. There was a faint motion there, like an incremental tightening of snake coils around something. Mel hissed out a breath when my fingers made contact, though he didn’t move.

_You’re just ink_ , I told it sternly. _And old ink, at that._ I could picture how it should look, if it were a normal, decorative, tattoo – faded slightly, a bit blurry around the edges. Repeated exposure to sunlight did that to tattoos, aged them. Sunlight, I thought. And then my power reached out to delicately touch him and the crisp lines of the pattern were blurring and shifting, the bold black fading to deep greenish colors. My tree-self whispered to something in Mel as the binding writhed and fell apart, and then I was staring at an elegant but faded tattoo of an oak leaf instead of the sharp lines of my family crest.

Mel flung his arms out with a shout as a shockwave spread out from him, knocking me over and shattering Yolande’s ward like an eggshell. He shuddered as his long-repressed magic swarmed over the nearest bad spot like an angry flash flood.

And then I sat up in utter shock because the bad spot was just...gone.


	3. Fruit

Oh _fuck_ , was my first thought. We’re not going to be able to hide _that_ from SOF... And then Mel was sagging forward onto his hands with a moan.

“Well,” Yolande said.

Mel lifted his head, beginning to focus toward the next closest bad spot.

“Ah ah,” Yolande scolded. “Control, child.”

Mel glared at her but reined himself in, mostly, a faint but steady trickle of power leaking from him and drifting in that direction.

She tilted her head and considered him, then shrugged. “So now we know what can happen when you bind a power down for a considerable time,” she said dryly, nudging the twisted remains of her ward anchors with a toe.

“That’s not possible,” he croaked, staring in the direction of a bad spot that had existed just a moment before. I would have said the same, I thought. No one could fix bad spots. You just didn’t live near any.

“All evidence to the contrary,” Yolande said dryly.

“I could never do that before!”

“No, I would imagine not. But that was no standard binding. That was an incredibly intricate piece of work and I wouldn’t have touched it for any amount of money.” I stared at her in outrage and she smiled. “Oh, I had no doubt about _your_ abilities, my dear. Your grandmother must’ve been foresighted to keep you from being formally trained. Not a route I would have chosen there either – you _can_ teach a powerful person by throwing them in the deep end and letting them learn to swim themselves. Or by overwhelming them with exposure to their opposite element, such as darkness to sunlight. And if they, and everyone around them, survive and remain sane, they can become exceptionally powerful.” She gave me a small smile. “A tremendous risk.”

“What kind of binding _was_ that?” Mel pushed off the ground and stood, his body still slightly inclined in the direction his magic was urging.

Yolande gathered up the blanket. “A type of directional knot. It turned your magic in on itself and forced it to ferment, if you will. Eventually it would’ve burst the binding open, though I think it would’ve been uncomfortable to have been in your vicinity when that happened. You seem to have been deliberately shaped. Primed, in a way no powers have _ever_ been nurtured before.” She started walking in the direction of the bad spot Mel had obliterated. “The inherent cruelty in the method is breathtaking.”

I nudged Mel to follow her and asked, “So you’ve never seen anyone bound like that?”

“Never,” she answered. “Though the times before the war were desperate indeed. I was aware that experimentation was happening, of course, and that not all of it was quite ethical.”

“But no one wanted to go under the dark,” Mel said.

Yolande nodded. “You agreed to the binding.”

“I was told that my affinity for nature would be far more useful in the fight and that my talent with machinery would only detract. I was a teenager. Asked to assist as part of a truly elite force against the ultimate evil. Of course I agreed.” He gave us a rueful smile. “And to get a magical tattoo out of it was just too spartan for words, you know?”

“Well.” Yolande stood at the edge of the former bad spot and surveyed it with a great deal of satisfaction. It was pristine, as if it had never existed. The wilderness continued uninterrupted and, in fact, looked even richer than the surrounding area. Birds were flocking to land in the trees, and a sweet smell arose from the grasses and wildflowers that filled the small sun-dappled clearings.

Mel walked out into it, grinning. Butterflies danced in the air around him.

“You better not attract bugs that way in the coffeehouse kitchen,” I said dryly, smiling at the obscene gesture he flipped me.

Yolande tilted her head. “We should go,” she said with brisk decision. “We will take a roundabout way back, to avoid those currently converging on us.” She sniffed. “SOF is getting sloppy.”

* * *

Back at the car, Mel ran his hands over the front of the Drake and abruptly flipped the hood up. He stroked his fingers over the engine block lovingly enough to make me faintly envious. “You had a leaky gasket.” He smiled and closed the hood. “It’s not a problem now.”

“We really must consider that your affinity may be for order over chaos,” Yolande mused as she started the sporty beast and turned away from the main road. “There are certainly small-fixers among the less talented, people who can mend cups and broken locks. But I’ve never heard of anyone with your range. And you had this before the binding?”

“An understanding only. A troubleshooting ability. Not this level of...” he waved his hands.

“Fixing bad spots,” I filled in. He nodded.

Yolande considered for several miles as we worked our way around the lake on back roads. “If you do not wish to disappear under the auspices of SOF, never to be seen again except to dance at their pleasure, you will need both allies and a plan. Both of you.”

I chewed my lip. “They keep trying to get me to work with them. But they don’t know everything.”

Yolande met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “They certainly don’t know about your dark friend.”

“No.” After a pause, I added bleakly, “And who would be allies with a vampire?” It felt like such a relief to say it out loud, even though it was to the two people who already knew about Con. “If it were widely known, I’d be put down as a danger to humanity.”

“You could go into hiding with him. No human could reach you in his lair, I believe.”

“I want my life!” I cried. “I want the coffeehouse, I want to complain about the damn cherry tarts, I want my family and my friends!”

“Then you will need allies,” she repeated.

“Allies with power,” Mel added with a frown. “You do have friends in SOF,” he said grudgingly.

Yolande hummed thoughtfully. “But how much power do they have?”

“Not enough.” I frowned, thinking of Pat and Jesse and Theo and Aimil and all the partbloods hidden within SOF. “Maybe. Maybe. But we’d have to trust them enough first to even ask them. And the head of the local office is a mind-trolling gorgon with probably-illegal hooks in her own people. Possibly in all of them.”

Yolande tapped her fingers against the steering wheel. “Well,” she said after a long pause. “In for a penny... And I thought retirement was going to be boring. Bring your potentials to the house tomorrow night. I should be able to tell if they’re influenced. And I have a few people I might reach out to, as well.”

“The coffeehouse weres,” Mel said. “Mrs Bialowski and crew. They’ve known something was up the whole time. And they’re already protecting you.”

It was abruptly too much, the thought of telling so many people. Mel might be right, but I could only start with what I could do. “SOF. Pat and Aimil. We’ll start with them.”

* * *

It was dark when we got back to the house, and I knew Con was waiting upstairs. From Yolande’s glance at my balcony when we passed the boundaries of her wards, I figured she could tell as well. She declined to accompany Mel and me upstairs.

Mel was practically bursting with magical energy and Con actually flinched when we walked in. Not a gesture that Mel or any other human would have seen, but I caught it.

“I visited the lake,” he said to Mel, coming right to the point as usual. “As soon as it was safe for me to travel. Your work there was a beacon until the magic fully dissipated.” He looked at me. “If your family truly foresaw this possibility, then perhaps their ethical lapses should be overlooked.”

“Do I hear a vampire having opinions on ethics?” I joked. Despite my fears for the future, there was the possibility of hope.

Con’s mouth quirked and he inclined his head slightly, then looked past me at Mel. His eyebrow rose ever so slightly. “I must admit I am less comfortable with your new immunity to my influence.”

Mel was sweating slightly. “It...takes some effort,” he admitted and looked away.

I stepped close to Con and touched his arm, gathering his attention. “We need to plan. I don’t think we’ll be able to put off the goddess of pain much longer and we’re not safe right now.”

“A situation made more difficult since you wish to continue your life here.” It wasn’t an attack from him, it was a simple statement of fact.

“We need allies,” Mel said. “Would you be able to work with others?”

“No.”

“...all right. Would you be able to refrain from nibbling on anyone who is helping Sunshine?”

“I have thus far.”

Mel made the little sound of exasperation that usually made me giggle.

I waved my hands to distract them. “I want to remove the possibility of the gorgon hurting us, Con, but we can’t take her out with an Other attack. That will just draw the wrath of all of SOF down on the attackers. I think it has to happen from inside.”

“Very well. You will tell your friends there the truth?”

“I’m thinking Pat and Aimil. I’d like to bring them here tomorrow night. Yolande thinks she can tell whether they are under any influence from the goddess. If they’re clear, I want us to discuss plans.”

“You would expose my existence to them?”

“If Yolande clears them, we need their help. And they’d need to know about you anyway if they’re going to work with us and still keep you hidden from the rest.”

“And if they do not react well?”

I didn’t have an answer that I liked. If they didn’t react well, I would have to leave New Arcadia, the coffeehouse, my family and friends here. Because I couldn’t let Con hurt them.

Mel set his hands on my shoulders from behind and stroked down my arms comfortingly.

Con looked away. “I have sensed signs of a possible incursion. I intend to patrol tonight.”

“I’ll go with you, of course,” I said, stepping forward and catching his hand.

“Well, I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow then,” Mel said dryly.

I looked from one to the other and sighed. This. This was the bit I’d been dreading. But having walked into a vampire nest while expecting to die any minute should make a simple conversation with two males I’m attracted to easy, right? Yeah, I don’t know what world that works in either.

“We’re not,” I got out, which only made them both look at me. Very helpful, Sunshine, not to mention clear as mud. I crossed my arms tightly to keep my hammering heart inside my chest. “We’re not having this conversation right now, but this isn’t about a choice between you.” Oh sure, that was even more helpful.

I opened my mouth again, but Mel shook his head, a rueful smile curling the corner of his mouth. “I’ve apparently been sharing you for months without knowing it, Sunshine, seems like we can wait a bit longer to talk.”

I bit my lip and felt like a horrible coward until he pulled me into one of those all-enveloping hugs of his. “It’s fine, Sunshine, we’ll talk when you’re ready,” he whispered into my hair.

I nodded and then turned to take Con’s hand again. As we stepped into nowheresville, leaving Mel in my living room, I knew it wasn’t going to be any easier later. But wimp that I was, I was relieved that it wasn’t going to be right now.

* * *

The next morning, I leaned out of the bakery once I had a breather and found the usual SOF crew at their table. I pointed firmly at Pat and then went back to start mixing a new batch of muffins.

He wandered in cautiously. “Rae?”

“Just you and Aimil, tonight. At my place. Can you arrange that? Without half of SOF knowing I plan to give you some information?”

He got excited and paid me the compliment of trying to hide it when I glared. “Yeah? Yeah. We can do that.”

“Fine. See you around 8pm.” It would be dark then, so Con would have no trouble.

He grinned happily. “So just fuck off until then, hmm?”

“Yes.”

* * *

At 8pm, I was waiting for them on the front porch. Yolande was inside, having prepared her wards. Mel was waiting with her, practicing his control over his magic. It still kept wanting to burst out at intervals, reaching for examples of disorder to fix. I wondered that Con hadn’t triggered it, and then I wondered what that said about Con, or Mel, or Mel’s magic. Or mine, for that matter. Once I had begun using it, it had accepted Con unconditionally. And yet, the frantic loathing of other vampires remained. Was it because of our bond? Was he really such a different kind of vampire? I knew it wouldn’t matter to most of humanity.

Pat drove up, and Aimil hopped out before he’d even turned the engine off, coming in for a hug and then searching my face.

“You’re not being coerced?” she demanded. “Pat says you asked for us to come here?”

“No coercion. C’mon inside. We’ll sit and have some tea with Yolande and talk.”

Pat frowned. “Your landlady knows about this?”

“I’m sure she’s been safer to talk to, since she probably hasn’t been trying to guilt Rae into joining a group with questionable ethics and morals,” Aimil said tartly. “Now let’s go hear what’s going on.”

“SOF is the best weapon we have against vampires,” Pat said stubbornly, not budging from the porch. I was beginning to worry that he wasn’t going to come through the wards. Was he aware of them?

“Not true.” I spoke softly, but it focused Pat like nothing else had. I felt a stir of air at my back and then Con was there, a welcome presence, still in shadow deep enough to not give him away as non-human.

“You!” Pat came closer and scowled past me at Con. “All right then, this better be good.” I stepped aside and Pat followed Aimil into the house, casting a little glare at Con as he went.

Con set his hands on my waist from behind and leaned close to my ear. “Your wardskeeper and I agree that there is a slight taint of influence there, but no direct control. He should be able to throw it off once aware of its presence. She will serve a tea that should help, as well.”

I nodded, trying to ignore the thrill that the brush of his cool lips against the edge of my ear gave me. He paused when my breath caught and then he was gone, back inside. No longer pressed along my back and slowly warming to human body heat. I was suddenly overwhelmed with frustration again. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep up this dance with him, and I didn’t know why he was being so hot and cold. My body wanted him, _I_ wanted him, but every approach ended with his abrupt retreat.

I sighed. More important things at the moment, Sunshine.

Inside, Yolande was setting a teacup down before everyone. Mel turned his sharp gaze from Con, who stood in the darkest corner, to me and patted the space on the sofa next to him invitingly. When I sat down, he briefly squeezed my fingers.

Aimil took a sip of her tea and smiled at Yolande in thanks. Pat lifted his politely, but paused to glare at the cup when the scent hit his nose. He cast a suspicious look at Yolande, who returned it with a stern look.

He took a deliberate sip, swirling it around in his mouth before swallowing. “Any reason you feel the need to dose us with gotu kola, ma’am?” he asked, setting the cup down.

“It’s excellent for mental clarity, agent. Surely you would _normally_ have no objections to that.”

He frowned as he took her heavy hint and then his gaze unfocused a little as his concentration turned inward. The frown deepened and he straightened in outrage. “That carthaginian bitch! She laid an influence on me!”

Yolande studied an object in her hands before nodding slightly. “Such things are quite illegal, as I am sure you are aware, agent.”

“And surely you know her own assistants are entirely under her control,” Con added softly from the shadows. “It was obvious to me on my single visit there.”

Aimil sipped her tea and watched as Pat struggled with that.

“Yeah,” he finally admitted and took a big gulp from his cup. “Yeah, although no one says anything about it at the office.”

“Or thinks of reporting it,” Aimil said delicately. “I said something to Theo when I first started and just about got my head bitten off. Since I’d already been basically blackmailed into joining, I thought it’d be better just to keep as much distance from the office as I could.”

Pat’s lips thinned.

“The point being that we need your help in making sure that Sunshine is not going back in that office,” Mel said.

“And neither will Con.” I crossed my arms. I felt him come to stand behind me again where I sat on the sofa.

Aimil was watching over the rim of her cup. “Who is not human unless I miss my guess.”

The room went very tense for a moment until Con came around the sofa very deliberately and sat down on my other side.

Pat’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re not...a vampire...”

“But I am. I have simply followed a different path than most others.”

“Then you and Sunshine...”

“Together we destroyed the master vampire in his nest with all of his attendants.”

There was a shocked pause, then Aimil leaned forward. “Are you all right, Rae?”

_Not even remotely,_ I thought. “Yes.”

She nodded gravely, clearly dubious, and then her face split in the infectious grin that I knew from before, from times when we’d tracked down a juicy tidbit about the Others on the globenet. A lifetime ago. “Ohmygodthatissospartan,” she whispered. “Are you planning to do it again? How can I help?”

“Hold on now!” Pat snapped. “I want to hear the whole story before anyone goes nomad. And by the way, there’s a little matter of a bad spot that seems to have grown back all of a sudden. Are you responsible for that impossibility, too?”

Mel cleared his throat. “No, that would be me.”

Pat and Aimil both blinked. “Tell us,” Aimil demanded, shifting forward to sit on the edge of her chair. “Tell us _everything.”_

So I did. It wasn’t easy but it felt good to tell the truth. And I was getting so much practice with the story that surely it would become even easier in the future, right?

* * *

There was silence for a little while when I finished speaking, and then Pat leaned back. “Why are you helping against your own kind?” he asked Con bluntly.

“We are _not_ the same kind.”

“You’re a vampire,” Pat said. “You drink blood, you kill to survive.”

“You eat meat. Do you consider yourself the same as a pack of rabid dogs?”

Pat curled his lip. “Do you prefer to think of us more as livestock?”

“I desire neither to cultivate nor to rule, which is what must happen if humanity loses this war. I have no more wish for the world to fall into darkness than you. My existence, my way of being, and the advantages it gives me over other vampires are a terrible threat to those who would hold power. They must destroy me or be destroyed.”

Mel looked intrigued. “Are there more of your particular kind out there?”

For the first time, Con sounded uncertain. “There should be. There must be, in hiding. I am far from the first. When the world was younger, and mankind not so numerous, my kind were the rule, and the others were hunted down lest they go too far.”

Mel looked fascinated. “A society of individual hunters rather than a group of parasites.”

“In ecological terms, a balance. A sensible and carefully kept equilibrium.”

“And what changed?”

“Humanity built empires and cities wherein vampires could hide and grow greedy and build their nests until they were too powerful to be stopped by individuals. Agreements between the nests created even more power. Now humanity is in danger of becoming nothing more than a cultivated food source. The wars reduced your numbers and slaughtered many of your most powerful magic-users. It has left you far more vulnerable than you know.”

“We do know,” Pat growled.

“And yet your global council, your Special Other Forces, your scientists and medical personnel and magic users are no further along than they were before the wars. With the single, apparently accidental, creation of Sunshine. That she and I together have the ability and the will to begin to balance the scales is unprecedented.”

“But you both need protection,” Aimil said softly. “From humans.”

Con inclined his head to her, gracious as a lord, though I could see the faintest curl of his lip. 

Pat flung himself to his feet and paced the room in agitation. “It’s too much,” he muttered.

Yolande arched an elegant eyebrow. “You are not breaking this down into small enough steps, agent. It cannot and will not happen all at once.”

He took a deep breath, and then another, and sat down again. “You’re right. But we’ll need more people involved.”

“People we can trust,” Aimil added.

Pat nodded. “We’ll need to get the goddess removed. She has hooks in so many of us, and she’s got holds on some of those above her. But with enough evidence of her influence, made public in undeniable ways...”

“I will reach out to some of my contacts,” Yolande said crisply.

Aimil was tapping her fingers. “We can begin steering the globenet communities with rumors and stories. It will be slow, but an online campaign on the Darknet will still spread faster than any other source of information.”

Con was watching all of this, his attention flicking back and forth. I could feel his perplexity. As glad as I was to finally have the hope of real help, I knew this had to be baffling for him. Humans, willingly working with a vampire?

Pat and Aimil left, discussing SOF personnel they thought were trustworthy. Yolande shooed the three of us upstairs to my place, probably glad to have a little peace and quiet again.

Mel considered Con where he stood at the balcony, looking out at the night. “And we’ll protect both of you, to the best of our ability,” he said softly. Con turned to give him the most clearly bewildered look I had ever yet seen on his face. Mel took a step toward him and he went still, watching with a wary tension. Mel continued, slowly and deliberately, until he was standing within reach, and lifted his hand, very lightly brushing the bare skin of Con’s wrist. I felt Mel’s magic reach out and touch Con as well; the lightest of contacts and then it subsided.

Con lifted his chin with a faint contempt laced with an odd amusement. “There is no mending what I am.”

Mel smiled and stepped back. “You going on patrol?” he asked both of us.

I nodded. Mel pulled me into a brief kiss, then gave me a little push toward Con. “Be safe,” he said.

* * *

When Con brought us back to my balcony before dawn, we found Mel sprawled asleep on my sofa, neck at an awkward angle and snoring softly.

Con held my fingers for a moment and then lifted my hand, bending to lay the lightest of kisses in my palm. I shivered at the rush of arousal that sped up my spine and Con gave me a faint smile before he stepped away, disappearing into nowheresville.

It hit me as I went to wake Mel enough to get him into bed. I wasn’t alone in this anymore. I had friends, and hope, and purpose, and although the future was more uncertain than ever, I reminded myself that I had one. I’d come a long way from the certain death that Sunshine-who’d-been-kidnapped-by-vampires had expected all those months ago.

And I was equally determined that, for as long as could, I would hold onto being the Cinnamon Roll Queen of Charlie’s Coffeehouse. That was also my home, and the soil that nourished me, and held the family and friends that were beyond price to me. That was what I would be fighting for. Even the damn cherry tarts the customers kept requesting that took so long to make.

Oh hell, I’d have to come up with a name for them now.


End file.
